Tag: curbs and stoops

Robot Will Kill’s Veng has been working around the clock to complete a new, block-long mural in time for this weekend’s Bushwick Open Studios. On Saturday, Vandevoort Place by Factory Fresh will be shut to traffic and transformed into Bushwick Art Park, a one-day sculpture garden featuring works by Bast, Leon Reid IV, Specter, Skewville, Ben Godward, Infinity, Garry Nichols, Tyrome Tripoli and El Celso.

Veng will further demonstrate his painting skills at the nearby Curbs & Stoops Active Space, where he and Nathan Pickett will be live painting. The space also opens a group show, Stay Gold, featuring Don Pablo Pedro, Nathan Pickett, QRST, Quel Beast, and Vahge.

While most of our readers are probably familiar with the fantastic art blog Curbs and Stoops, what you may not be aware of is that, in collaboration with Welner Associates, they will be opening the Curbs and Stoops Active Space this Friday, February 18th. Spanning over 6,000 feet, the space will be used for art exhibitions, studios, and a residency program, all with the goal of forming a progressive cultural center designed to promote community through art. In the true spirit of ‘go big or go home’, Friday’s ambitious grand opening will include five exhibitions, three open studios and a party all curated to highlight the scope and caliber of artists that they will be collaborating with. Participating artists include: Angel Otero, Ashley Zelinskie, Brian Maller, Brian Matthew, Christopher Rivera, Hector Arce, Hector Hernandez, Jason Mones, Jeffrey Peña, Jonathan Chapline, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Pep Williams, Rachel LaBine, Sebastian Vallejo, Lapiztola Collective, UR New York Collective and Super Pop Collective. It also happens to be the fifth installment of Norte Maar’s Beat Nite, which is sponsered this time around by our friends over at Hyperallergic.

Last night The Curbs and Stoops crew were gracious enough to show me around their new space and to give The Street Spot readers a preview of what they have in store for us this Friday:

When my friend Jaime Rojo of Brooklyn Street Art heard that I was going to the Mexican city of Oaxaca for vacation, one of the first suggestions that he made to me was to look up the street art collective Lapiztola. Prior to our conversation, I had never thought of Oaxaca as having much in the way of street art, but thinking more about it, it makes a lot of sense. Oaxaca is a state know to revere its native cultures and crafts, has produced many notable contemporary painters, and it’s history of political unrest and protest has made for a fertile street art environment .

In fact, the Lapiztola collective formed during a political uprising that took place in Oaxaca during a seven month period of time in 2006. It began with teachers’ strikes and extended into a wider revolt and open confrontation with the Mexican state in protest of political corruption and acts of repression. Lapiztola, the name itself a telling play on the Spanish word lapiz (pencil) and pistola (pistol), took action to support the people’s movement by bringing their politically charged art to the streets. In a great interview with Jeffrey Pena of Curbs and Stoops, the collective talks more about the influence of the uprising and of the government in general on their art work.

Two members of the collective, Roberto & Rosario, were kind enough to meet up with me while I was in Oaxaca to discuss street art, graffiti and politics over a couple of beers and to give me a tour of their studio. The work of Lapiztola typically combines more graphic, repetitive elements in the form of silk screening with a stencil overlay used to illustrate more immediate elements. Their work appears to frequently explore themes of freedom and captivity, innocence and violence, and the power of the individual vs the government, all with a reverence for Mexican culture and heritage. Sometimes the meaning behind a piece of work may be more subtle than it is at other times, but the images are always strong & powerful.

And though we have not seen much of their work here in New York, they have maintained a very busy schedule participating in shows around Mexico, South America, and Europe. Hopefully in the near future we will have a chance to welcome them here! Until then, if you are interested in buying artwork from Lapiztola, I found several prints available on the Just Seeds website, reasonably priced at $50 each. To see more of their work, check out the Lapiztola blog.